Recruiter Top 10: Ways to Engage With Students and Recent Graduates Online

Welcome to Top 10, Recruiter.com’s weekly rundown of the best of the best in recruiting! Every Friday, we release a list of some of our favorite people, things, and ideas dominating the industry. From awesome tech tools and cool companies to great books and powerful trends, no stone in the recruiting space will be left unturned.

This Week: Top 10 Ways to Engage With Students and Recent Graduates Online

So you’re looking to recruit some college students or recent grads to your organization – but how? You can connect with campus career centers, set up shop at career fairs, hold open houses – all great techniques, really. But your strategy should also include a healthy digital component. Young talent tends to spend quite a bit of time on the internet, so why not meet them where they are?

Below are 10 of our favorite ways to connect with college students and recent graduates online. Check them out and find the tools you need to recruit the best and brightest young workers:

1. HireCanvas

HireCanvas, a mobile student relationship management system for campus recruiters, touts itself as “the simplest campus recruiting software ever.” It earns the right to say that by allowing campus recruiting teams to create student databases through which they can track their prospects and maintain relationships from the first time they meet to the moment a hire is made.

Also of note is the mobile app, which recruiters can use to capture student information at career fairs and other in-person recruiting events. Much easier than lugging stacks of resumes around – and much more exciting then handing prospects a sign-up sheet on a clipboard.

College Recruiter is a niche job board specifically meant to connect students and recent grads with internships, entry-level jobs, and career opportunities. Plus, it offers a ton of extra services and tools – like resume critiques and a salary calculator – to help young talent find their footing. From a recruiting angle, this is beneficial because it draws in more grads and students whose attention you can capture through your job posts.

College Recruiter also offers a number of advertising plans to fit the needs of a wide variety of employers and recruiters. Whether you’re recruiting for a three-person startup or a major corporation, you’ll be able to find an arrangement that works for you.

Interview Buddy isn’t a recruiting tool per se. Rather, it’s a platform that allows students and recent grads to connect with industry experts for one-on-one mock interviews. The Interview Buddy team aims to help people “prepare for and practice interviewing in a stress-free, no-pressure environment that simulates a real-life job interview.” To ensure the quality of the sessions, Interview Buddy rigorously screens experts and only allows the best of the best to join up.

You can use Interview Buddy as a way to give back and help young talent break into the professional world – or as a way to connect with promising students and grads.

We highlighted WayUp in a previous Top 10, but we think the company deserves another shoutout here.

Created by 26-year-old Liz Wessel, WayUp posts jobs specifically for students and recent grads while offering a wealth of insight into topics like job interviews, career advice, and internship tips. The app also boasts a massive built-in talent pool: one million users and growing (by about 25,000-30,000 members a week!) from more than 5,200 schools.

“Millennials are the most technology-embracing generation there is. It is very important to them to work for an organization that embraces the efficiency technology brings as much as they do. Communicate with them via social media during the recruiting process and they will be more inclined to want to work for you. Use social media to create a strong employer brand. Go further than just connecting on LinkedIn – use targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram to get their attention. Be creative in your ads and outreach.”

6. The Whether by Better Weekdays

The Whether is an inbound recruiting platform that helps employers attract talent by marketing their brands to college students. Through personalized company profiles and targeted content, recruiters can reach out to prospective candidates and spark relationships that lead, eventually, to new hires. The Whether is an excellent way to build a diverse talent pool of quality candidates – almost without lifting a finger.

Like WayUp, Koru has also appeared in a previous Top 10 (in the same one, actually). And like WayUp, Koru earns another mention today.

One of the challenges of recruiting recent grads is that they don’t always have much in the way of previous work experience. When that happens, recruiters may end up relying too much on GPAs or school prestige – which aren’t necessarily great indicators of a candidate’s future performance.

Koru offers a predictive analytics tool that helps employers better assess young talent potential based on a fusion of competencies that are highly relevant to job performance. That way, decision-makers can be more confident that they’re offering the right jobs to the right grads.

Mytasca is a one-stop shop for campus recruiting research. The Mytasca database contains information about every college and university in the U.S., allowing you to filter through schools according to demographics, degree programs, disciplines, location, and more. Rather than spending hours trying to find the right campus for your next recruiting effort, use Mytasca to home in on the institutions that meet your talent needs.

“Working with recent graduates is less about the individual’s previous work history and more about connecting them with a position and company that’s right for them,” says Evangelina Leclaire, founder of Ready Set Rock and expert career coach.

That’s why employer branding is so important.

“If a company wants to attract top talent from a pool of recent graduates, they need to engage them by showing off a few things: what makes their brand unique, how they value individual employee growth, and how appealing the work environment is,” Leclaire adds. “Give candidates an inside look into a company’s corporate culture – the unique qualities that make it a special place to work. Let them hear from a diverse group of people that already work there.”

Leclaire says employers should make the most of their websites, social media channels, and career sites like The Muse in order to capture candidates’ attention and attract them to the right jobs.

10. Looksharp

Looksharp brings together students from across the country into one centralized talent marketplace. Recruiters and employers can post jobs on Looksharp, or they can dive deeper by searching through candidate profiles to find students and graduates who have the skills and qualifications they need. Looksharp also offers a mobile app recruiters can use to capture and organize candidate leads. Particularly cool is the fact that recruiters can set customized qualification questions depending on the events they’re attending, thereby screening candidates much more quickly.

Recruiter.com's Top 10 series showcases the best of the best from the world of recruiting. Every week, we highlight the amazing people, awesome tech tools, cool companies, great books, and powerful trends shaping and disrupting the industry.